Contrary to the title, I really don’t have a whole lot to report here. It’s summer, it’s hot, I’m still recovering, and nothing all that newsworthy is going on. We’re officially in the quiet season of the year here in Florida, and I’m not mad about it. Does make for a bit of a boring blog though, doesn’t it?

The good news is that the ankle is slowly but surely improving. I’m pretty much back to doing all my normal activities, just maybe not quite at max capacity yet. The bone seems pretty good, but the soft tissue that I banged up in the process is still a bit stiff and angry (there’s still a little swelling and bruising), so I don’t quite have all my mobility back in that foot yet when it’s in the stirrup. I have to put the stirrup a little “home” in order to post comfortably, and my leg doesn’t hang quite right. Still though, a couple weeks ago I couldn’t put it in a stirrup at all, so progress is happening. Much much slower than I would prefer, but it’s happening nonetheless. I can post the trot and I feel like I’m close to be able to stay in a half seat for more than a few strides at a time. Glorious.

In the meantime, Presto has gone back to the school of remembering that he’s trained. He definitely got a bit lazy and complacent during his impromptu vacation and is relatively certain that I should definitely carry his head around everywhere. I maintain that his head is attached to his body and therefore by default is actually his responsibility to carry. He is shooketh by this revelation. As if we’ve never had this conversation at all before in the past 2 years.

In Lottie news, she’s continuing to just come in for groomies and to explore the farm in hand. I’ve expanded our bubble in that I’m taking her further out – to the riding field, down to the pond, etc. And I’ve started asking her for really basic in-hand stuff, like stopping when I stop, moving her body out of my space, etc. Not as far as what I’d call groundwork yet, but starting to head that direction a bit more. It’s all very casual at the moment, with no timeline.

She got her feet done for the second time here this week, which means she’s been here for 5 weeks now. There wasn’t a lot of hoof growth in that time but we were able to open up the front shoes a teeny bit, so I’ll take that. And she’s managed to not destroy her bare hind feet. Small wins. I have her first little vlog posted on Patreon for those that want to see what she’s up to (spoiler alert: boring stuff).

The most interesting news with her lately is that I got her Etalon genetic test results back!

Short version: she was born bay and only has one gray gene. Both of her parents were gray so I was really curious as to whether or not she was homozygous.

She’s homozygous agouti, which means she could never produce a black foal, and she does have a chestnut gene too. She had a few interesting things on the health variants (the full report and what it all means is on Patreon too) but nothing too bad… she’s not a carrier for any muscle or neurological disorders that I’m most concerned about. It was helpful to know that she’s got two markers as a carrier for ERUS – Equine Recurrent Uveitis Symptom Severity. It doesn’t mean that she has or will ever get uveitis, but it means that if for whatever reason she were to ever develop uveitis she’s 12x more likely to have more severe symptoms compared to a horse without no ERUS variants. Good to know, she’ll keep wearing her fly mask and we’ll make sure to check her eyes annually!

Her temperament type is Curious & Vigilant, which is what I had guessed. At first I thought she was more vigilant, but honestly I think it’s because she’s never really been encouraged to be curious. The more I let her explore things, the more her curious side is starting to come out. And she does like attention, which is more typical of the curious ones. So that does seem bang-on that she’s a mixture of the two!

In Henry news: he got his front shoes pulled this week. He had to wear 4 shoes in Texas because it was so hard and rocky, but he’s gone almost 2 years here in just front shoes. His hind feet have done really well on the Florida sandy soil, so I finally decided to just bite the bullet and pull the fronts too. He doesn’t work that much, and we’re about to get into the wetter season with softer ground, so it seemed like a good time. Something about it feels a little bit like an end of an era though… he was barefoot when I got him out of a pasture all those years ago, and now he’s barefoot again. Full circle.